(image credit: iangti)
Scientists have recently claimed that anti-social behavior, especially amongst youth, is caused by chemical imbalance in the brain. In other words, the research states that youth are not responsible for their behavior. It’s their brains’ fault. The social implications of this research are staggering.Sociologists and criminologist now claim that we must consider this research when judging youth criminal and anti-social behaviors, and treat them as if they were irresponsible for their acts. However, only a couple of generation ago anti-social behavior was far less common among young people. Have our brain changed that much? Unlikely
After all, the greatness of our mind is that it gives us the ability to shape and control it, but only if we believe we can. Taking away our responsibility to control our own mind makes us incapable of doing so.
Blaming our brain processes, as if they were a disease, for our behavior is a path that we, as a society, must never take. Not only will it open the door to justifiable criminal or anti-social behaviors, it will also justify discrimination based on physiological criteria. After all, if we believe that our physiology takes away our choice and determines our behavior, discrimination based on physiology and background is the right thing.
It’s been a long and painful journey to learn to recognize people for who they are, and not for their background. Do we really want to risk reversing this great achievement? Don’t we want to encourage the human spirit to overcome the limitations of the body, rather than write off the human spirit altogether, and treat people as if they were nothing more than predictably-behaved bag of chemicals? Or is it really all we are?
2 comments:
Good point.
I also heard recently that autism should not be considered as a disease. Many other "mental diseases" defined by psychology are questionable also.
Even though in a very deep level I believe we are define by some "unknown" or "incontrollable" factors, such as fate, or whatever, I do agree that blaming everything (especially offensive behaviors toward others) to physical matters would lead some dangerous social outcome.
Yes, through science in research we are much more able to understand that many mental illnesses we call disease are are actually disorders or conditions (using the medical model). Autism is a neurological disorder; so is schizophrenia. Now we see that the brain scans of sociopaths and depressed people are different from the norm and that the neural connections are not being healed as they do in other diseases.
How much responsibility do we assign to those who are disabled? A good, but difficult question--that is the nature vs. nurture debate.
I think it is clear that people we thought should be held more accountable has now changed for scientific reasons.
These limitations can, of course, be minimized or exacerbated by nurture, no doubt.
We can judge the act, but not the actor. We don't know enough.
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